In 1976, D. Carleton Gadjusek was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for proving the link between a slow-acting prion disease that caused madness and death in the Fore tribe in Papua New Guinea and the tribe’s funerary ritual of eating deceased members of their tribe.

Debut novelist Hanya Yanagihara, an editor at large with Condé Nast Traveler, wrote in a recent essay that she was fascinated not only by Gadjusek's celebrated contributions to medical science but with his notorious personal life. During the years he spent traveling to Papua New Guinea and Micronesia, he adopted more than 50 children who lived with him in his Maryland home. Gadjusek was arrested, tried and sent to prison after being accused of sexually abusing some of them.

So entranced was Yanagihara by Gadjusek's amazing and bizarre story she used it as the inspirational seed for "The People in the Trees."

There are similarities between Gadjusek's story and that of Norton Perina, the novel's conflicted protagonist, but Yanagihara adds elements of fantasy, horror and Indiana Jones-like adventure to Perina's story. And like literary stalwarts J.R.R. Tolkien and Jonathan Swift and contemporary writers J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer, Yanagihara also employs, with great success, an age old plot device: the consequences of unnatural longevity and immortality.

In 1950, Perina joins an expedition to the tiny (fictional) Micronesian nation of U'ivu located about 1,000 miles east of Tahiti. He's part of a small team led by maverick anthropologist Paul Tallent who hopes to discover a rumored lost tribe said to be living on Ivu'ivu, one of U'ivu's three islands. Ivu'ivu, also known as the Forbidden Island, writes Yanagihara, is a land said to be inhabited "soley by gods and spirits and monsters." Stories abound of how "trees there talked in whispery rushes, how stones slid silently across the ground, how there were plants that fed on flesh. Everyone claimed to know some foolish person who had once gone there to explore and who had never returned."

Having intrigued us with her novel's phantasmagorical setting, Yanagihara gilds it with local myths and legends that tell of forest dwellers known as dreamers who may not be quite human. A witness describes one of the dreamers thusly: "(He) looked like a man and moved like a man but who flailed and could not speak, who shrieked like a monkey and, though he seemed strong and healthy, was without sense." The natives call these forest dwellers "mo'o kua'au."

Tallent and Perina eventually encounter the dreamers and are shocked to learn some of them may be more than 150 years old. But while their bodies have stayed young, their minds have completely degenerated. Local legend has it that the dreamers' longevity is linked to eating the meat of the Opa'ivu'eke, a rare island turtle that plays a key role in the island's culture and mythology. Perina kills one of the sacred turtles and takes it and some of the dreamers back to America for study in the hope that he can separate the meat's longevity benefits from the dementia side effects.

While Tallent is merely engrossed in chronicling the life and culture of the island, Perina is driven by his hunger for recognition in the scientific community. His published writings about the lost tribe bring him professional advancement but set in motion the destruction of the island as scientists and pharmaceutical companies race to Ivu'ivu to learn and hijack its secrets. Soon the island nation is stripped of its vegetation and wildlife. Dense forest trails have been replaced by air strips, and the islanders' culture is diluted by modern influences. Their ancient ways and rituals are decimated.

Collateral damage — ecological and cultural — offers readers the opportunity to contemplate philosophical issues. Is it worth destroying a culture and natural beauty to unearth secrets of longevity? Can we justify, in the name of science, the suffering and death of lab animals including mice, dogs and monkeys — also described in detail in the novel? Is it inhumane or a necessary part of the scientific process?

But "The People in the Trees" is much more than a fantastical story of an exotic tribe, its dark secrets and the destructive influences of big pharma and the scientific method. It's also the story, perhaps more so, of Perina's life. Like Gadjusek, Perina adopts dozens of children and, like his real-life counterpart, he's accused of sexual abuse.

The novel forces readers, as much as it does Perina's acquaintances, to wonder if he's the victim of false accusations. One acquaintance ponders whether Perina, if he's the monster he's accused of being, should be forgiven because of his genius — despite his most unsympathetic personality. The novel reveals a cold, amoral center blackened by misogyny and little regard for most human beings and animals. He applies as much emotion to euthanizing lab animals as he does to adopting children: little or none.

"The People in the Trees" is a multi-layered novel. It provokes discussions about science, morality and our obsession with youth. But it's also a deeply satisfying adventure story with a horrifying conclusion. It envelops readers in the island's mysteries, enthralling them with its lush greenery, its turtles, monkeys, birds and giant worms. U'ivu, "a place of mingled delights and horrors," is a great place to add to your armchair itinerary.

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